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Canada has proposed doing away with its penny, a coin that has become a seeming anachronism and nuisance there and its neighbor to the south. While it was presented as a cost-saving measure for the Canadian government, if it spreads to the U.S., it could end up costing those who can least afford it.

The penny plays an outsized role for English speakers, which is of secondary importance in Canada, where French is the official language of its largest province, Quebec. "A penny for your thoughts?" That no longer would be possible. "A dime saved is a dime earned' has the same literal meaning as the traditional saying about the penny, but it just doesn't come through the same.

You might say that Canada is being penny wise and pound foolish, another saying that harkens back to an anachronistic money system. (Before Great Britain adopted decimalization in 1971, it had always been 12 pence to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound.) The Canadian government says it costs 1.6 cents to produce each penny and eliminating the coin would save $11 million annually, according to its budget statement.

Prices would be rounded to the nearest nickel under a system called Swedish rounding. That scheme was adopted when Sweden eliminated its equivalent of one- and two-cent coins in 1972 and was adopted by New Zealand when it eliminated its penny in 1990 and Australia did likewise two years later.

Economists say that should have no impact on prices, but human nature being what it is, there is sure to be more rounding up than down. That's at least been my admittedly limited experience of dealing in a penniless situation. A wine shop in downtown Manhattan (which I no longer patronize) was run by a jerk who decided he wanted nothing to do with pennies and would round up to the next nickel with impunity. Why? Because he could. And if every shopkeeper could do it, none would stand out as a jerk.

More likely, items would be priced in amounts that weren't in nickels or dimes, but so they would come out as an even number with sales tax added. So, a box of detergent for $4.50 might be hiked to $4.61 to make it $5.00 after tacking on an 8.5% sales levy.

Forcing consumers to deal with rounded-up prices that would inevitably follow the elimination of the penny in the U.S. makes even less sense given how many of us routinely swipe debit or credit cards at the checkout counter rather than deal with change. There's no discount for paying cash so you can assume you're already paying the card transaction fee, so you might as well use plastic. And as the use of electronic money such as Google Wallet spreads, we'll be using smart phones instead of plastic. So, prices in odd cents won't be any inconvenience since they're just on paper (if indeed you bother with a receipt.)

And perhaps stock investors would be affected most if penny pricing were eliminated along with the one-cent coin. The end of archaic pricing of stocks in 1/8s and 1/4s in the 21st century resulted in a sharp reduction in spreads between bid and asked prices, according to a Government Accountability Office study in 2005. The GAO found a 73% drop in bid-asked spreads for all New York Stock Exchange stocks after decimalization of prices and a 68% drop for Nasdaq stocks.

Moreover, the GAO found pricing stocks in pennies benefitted individual investors even more than big institutions. The big losers were market makers, however. Revenues of NYSE specialist firms fell by more than half, to $902 million in 2004 from $2.1 billion in 2000.

Those pennies add up. On Wall Street, going to penny pricing benefitted its consumers—investors big and small. If pennies are eliminated on Main Street U.S.A., the losers are apt to be those who can least afford it -- middle- and lower-income families who will have to pay higher prices as they're rounded up. So, you can keep this change.